So, I sat down today with a simple task: continue testing out these new Linux distros and install a text editor for quick tweaks. But as I sat down to pick one, I was reminded just how big and cool the world of text editors is. Before I knew it, I was researching their histories,… continue reading.
Yeah, Nedit “died off”; fortunately Xnedit was created to revive and update Nedit into the current Xnedit, which has been nicely updated several times; currently 1.6.1 as of January 5, 2025.
Very interesting to see Sublime Text so near the bottom, but maybe the order is not an opinion. Even more interesting to discover Lapce and Zed … going to try those out now. Sublime Text is great but leaves certain things to be desired.
VSCodium is lacking alongside Visual Studio Code since that is the de-Microsofted version ( which like most de-Googled things still has traces )
While Sublime Text is much faster than VSCodium … I can still feel the lag when dealing with >50 files in over >5 instances
And the console view is ancient, and an afterthought. The plugin ecosystem is extremely ‘meh’ and the entire aesthetic of the editor is just south of minimalist and over in the realm of cut-off-nose-to-spite-face which is sad to me, having to spend so much of my life in there…
Anyway, discovering this list and searching for developer popped up at least two promising options, and from a programmer perspective I will definitely report back. Right now the sheer massiveness of these codebases is breaking the entire idea of the IDE, and then you get into ‘AI’ ( rename pending ) alongside that and it is just not a comfortable situation anymore. Like that “ugly beard” stage between stubble and full.
I tried out both Sublime Text and VS Code but not VSCodium; I found the lighter, quicker choices such as helix were much more interesting and fast, plus easy to configure or customize. I continue to be a fan of XNEdit for quick editing.
As far as really powerful text editors, and in this case something that’s too large and cumbersome for an old system, take a look at Spacemacs.
It’s a blend of GNU Emacs and Neovim, somewhat similar to “Doom Emacs” but it changes the default key bindings to a space bar followed by mostly alphabet letters, making it much easier on the hands and fingers.
You can still use the vi keys or the traditional Emacs keys if you REALLY want, but the approach and the themes put an entirely different perspective on both vi and Emacs. With this method, providing you have a current generation system you can use it any way you want, very powerful, very flexible.
My only warning is that it’ll overwhelm an old computer (10+ years old).
Another REALLY tiny text editor is e3: " e3 is a complete mini application written fully in assembler, with a
code size less than 10000 byte. There is a status & input line, where
you can enter filenames, blocknames, find-texts and line numbers. The
editor commands are similarly the families of Wordstar-like or Emacs or
Pico or vi or Nedit editors. For online help press ESC:h in vi mode,
else Alt-H."
To use “emacs”, type e3em, for vi, e3vi, etc. Very small, very fast.
To summarize: 1) xnedit is a great, simple GUI editor to add to the list, and 2) e3 is a super light, small editor. Both are worthy of being on this list.
Article updated. Note upstream development of e3 has effectively stopped, but distribution maintainers still keep the tiny editor building and installable.
Last upstream release.
The newest tarball most people can still find is 2.82 / 2.8.2, uploaded by author Albrecht Kleine. openSUSE’s changelog shows that bump arriving in January 2017 and mentions no newer code since then.
No new code from the author.
Kleine’s old Google Sites page is broken/offline, there is no public VCS, and there have been no public announcements or tarballs after 2.8.2. Everything you see in repos today is that same source with small distro-side patches.
Gentoo keeps an ebuild and was still touching the packaging in February 2024 (suppressing a QA warning, no code change). (packages.gentoo.org)
Because the binary is so small and self-contained, distros are happy to leave it in, but you should not expect new features, bug fixes, or upstream support.
If the current 2.8x release meets your needs, it remains perfectly usable. Just remember that any future fixes would have to come from a downstream maintainer or your own patches.
@hydn Thanks for the update on e3 and the inclusion of e3. The fact that e3 is no longer developed or supported is no big deal. It is a very small, light editor, similar in some respects to Joe-jupp in it’s ability to offer very simple key bindings for multiple editing styles, yet it’s smaller than Joe. No great heroics with either editor, but they’re both useful for small, old systems, and they still get the job done for really basic insertion and modification of text or small programs/scripts.
Nice to see xnedit included too. Neither of them are earth shattering tools, but I find myself choosing xnedit in place of Notepad-like editors, so I use it instead of Featherpad, Leafpad, Mousepad or Notepad (++ too). e3 is just handy for a geek like me who varies the tools used just to keep the fingers flexible and able to work with more than one style or convention.
I tend to agree with you.
I haven’t used it recently but it is definitely full featured and probably does qualify as an integrated development environment.
Used to use Geany on my Pi3, but Pi OS now includes MousePad instead of LeafPad, which features syntax highlighting, so for lightweight editing, is perfect for small coding projects. Perfect, that is, except when it pauses, has an internal struggle, then loses the highlighting.
I will add this to the list now as it also works with Linux! Amazing how many great options are available. 
Just remember that any future fixes would have to come from a downstream maintainer or your own patches.